Alan let the room settle after his earlier rebuke to the fresh-faced assistants. Then, in a measured tone, he began his first real lesson in South Asian politics.
"Hyderabad," he said, "has stood beside Britain since before the name was common on European lips. Back when it was still ruled by the Nizams, it helped us break the Maratha Empire — not once, but three times. It lent its troops in all four Mysore Wars. Even in 1857, when half the subcontinent rose in revolt, Hyderabad kept faith."
He let that sink in."The result of that loyalty," he continued, "is that when stronger Indian powers were swept from the board, Hyderabad survived as the last great princely state. The Marathas and Mysore are gone; the Nizam remains."
The younger staff scribbled notes. Alan decided not to tell them the less romantic truth — that the East India Company's favorite pastime had once been manufacturing excuses to annex princely lands. A missing heir, a disputed tax, a conveniently insulting envoy — and another patch of color on the map turned red. It had been a game not unlike China's old gaitu guiliu reforms, replacing hereditary rulers with direct control.
"After the Mutiny," Alan said aloud, "that… enthusiasm was reined in. We stopped eating the mango orchard and decided to tend it instead. The result is today's patchwork of five hundred states."
He closed the briefing with a sharper edge. "Hyderabad's Resident is a guest, not a master. You are here to advise the Nizam, not to play god in his court. That role is already taken."
In quieter times, Alan thought, such a posting might have been a form of exile. The Nizam could ignore his Resident entirely and London would barely blink. But 1945 was not a quiet year. The game had changed.
The British could still look down on India, yes — but only if they picked the right target. Class and race boundaries could be porous when interests aligned.
And in this moment, the tide was going out. He had no miracle plan to hold it back. Any fantasy to the contrary belonged firmly in the realm of dreams.
What he could do was use the time left to build a career and a fortune. If that meant small sacrifices from "the great Indian people," as the rhetoric went, then so be it.
His own father, after all, had been left holding the ledger during the Bengal famine — a "historical shift" that made him the face of misery in one of Britain's darker chapters. If the family name could survive that, Alan could certainly survive what was coming.
He had a few days before his official start in Hyderabad, and a small personal detour in mind.
"Which city on the Ganges has the densest population and some industry?" he asked Baring.
The older man frowned. "The Central and United Provinces are the most crowded, yes. But why in God's name—? Hyderabad is in the south, Wilson."
"I'm considering the most efficient route," Alan said lightly. In truth, it was morbid curiosity. He wanted to see the Ganges for himself — to know whether its legendary filth and floating corpses were yet what they would become in the future he remembered.
There was, he thought, propaganda value in such sights. London's public would resent India's independence less if they could be convinced the place was irredeemable. A few carefully selected photographs could do more than a hundred Parliamentary speeches.
We didn't lose India, the story would go. India was never worth keeping.
For now, though, the river disappointed him. No grotesque tableaux, no convenient evidence. Two years, he reminded himself. There would be time.
By the time the train pulled out of New Delhi, Alan had memorized every useful scrap about the Nizam.
Mir Osman Ali Khan: small frame, wiry, ascetic to the point of legend. Owned one fez, wore patched trousers, and cleaned his own plate to a shine. Slept on a mat in a room cluttered with wastebaskets.
And yet — the richest man in the world, Time magazine had said in 1937. Jewels, gold, investments that would make European monarchs blush. But Alan understood the truth: the Nizam's thrift was not miserliness. It was discipline. His wealth was a fortress, the bedrock of an independent Hyderabad.
A fortress that would, in the end, fall to Nehru's Congress. The Nizam's faith — Muslim in a Hindu-majority state — was his greatest liability. Were Hyderabad and Kashmir to swap their rulers, history might have played very differently.
Somewhere in the north, before leaving Hindu-majority territory, the train shuddered to a halt. Hours passed.
When Alan finally inquired, the answer came back with the flatness of routine: "Muslims and Hindus. Fighting again."
He glanced out at the station platform — half-empty, the air brittle with the absence of gunfire but thick with the knowledge it might return.
Just another day in India.